Girls in Deadly Frocks, Especially The One With Dreadlocks(JacksonxOC)
by ALostWinchester
Summary: From the first season throughout the series, Veronica is a curious Scottish lassie who catches the attention of Captain Jackson. An emotional roller coaster cull of deception, infidelity (of course) and murder. Well, what else would you expect from a member of a mastermind steampunk cult seeking to cause mayhem and havoc throughout the world? 'M' for some sexually explicit scenes.
1. Chapter 1

In the morning I woke to silence, an unusual sound in my life. I lived in my father's house, and although it was just the two of us there, I woke each day to the sound of his movements through our home, unless something was amiss.

I headed to work, I was a secretary to the sheriff's court (which basically meant I was every staff member's secretary), a relatively new position of four months. I wore black, grey, forest green, or navy blue skirts and coats over white or cream shirts every day and this one was like all the rest. I worked my way through my normal duties for as long as I could before excusing myself - the gossip was too much for me to keep from investigating. I headed straight to Leman Street and to my delight it was busy.

I watched carefully as I moved through, giving all appearances of waiting patiently and stretching my legs. I was forgettable with my hair up, hat covering the half head of dreadlocks I had woven in Egypt two years before. My hair was mousy and brown, my skin was tanned from years adventuring in the sun with my grandfather, my eyes were so brown they oft appeared black, and I was, I cannot deny with all the modesty in the world, a striking beauty.

I found something incredible. Inside a modest and wonderfully private (for the short term) office, sporting a map of Whitechapel, including where I stood, decorated with pictures pins and string. Of course, the photographs were of murdered women, their faces and bodies scarred more horribly in the real impression of a photograph than any drawn diagram near them could depict. Scraps of paper with script speckled some of the space in between, like stars around a moon, only there were five moons.

Mary Ann Nichois, 31 August 1888

Annie Chapman, 8 September 1888

Elizabeth Stride, 30 September 1888

Catherine Eddowes, 20 September 1888

Mary Jane Kelly, 9 November 1888.

"Can I help you?" a voice boomed from behind me. I jumped and turned.

"Is it really him?" I wanted to know straight away, "Is there really another victim?"

"Who are you working for?" he demanded, two men crowding around him to see inside. "Who let you in here?"

I took a beat to assess the three of them. The speaker was tall - well compared to me they were all tall - dark of hair but it was tidy and short, he held onto a bowler hat and a grey coat atop his working suit. A policeman but of higher status than a uniformed beat walker.

"Is this your office?" I stalled.

"Yes and I demand to know what business you have here." he stepped a little closer and I looked quickly to the other two. A worn looking face, a short beard, eagle eyes and red hair, all in black save his shirt. Weren't we just twins? The other, more colourfully dressed, Cigarette hanging impossibly out of his lips, hands sporting little, almost indistinguishable spots of blood where he had failed to rinse them off, stubble and large dark sideburns under his little hat.

"Don't look here for help, darlin'." he drawled. Urgh, American.

"You're a long way from home Yankie."

"You're not too near your roots either darlin'," he replied defensively, "What's that a Scotch twang you got there?"

"Scott-ish, Yank."

He smirked unattractively and the cigarette hung in there.

"Drake, escort this woman off the premises."

The ginger moved towards me aggressively and I let myself coward a little in front of him, for his pride,

"Please don't touch me, I'll go willingly right away."

He hesitated and as I looked to the cleaner looking of the two dark haired ones, I made my exit. I didn't expect him to grip my arm and stop me.

"Your name, girl." he hissed.

"Veronica." I answered, shying away from him.

"Veronica, what?"

"Please let me go sir, I let my curiosity get the better of me and I'm sorry."

His grip tightened before he let me loose.

"Later, Scotch." the American drawled as I passed so I shouldered into him as I passed.


	2. Chapter 2

"Good morning Scotland." a foreign voice drawled out of a man's mouth very close to me as I slept. The American's voice. I sprang to life and sat upright in the bed. I looked at my surroundings. Thank Heaven it wasn't my bed I woke in, for if my father - dad!

"What time is it?" I asked politely. Enough. His hand slipped onto my shoulder to pull me back. The sensation was not of skin on skin but of his skin over my thin shift. It was miles better than wearing nothing. I shrugged the hand off and wouldn't look at him. I searched for a clock of the wall or wrist or pocket variety.

"Sweet, heart," I heart him moving around, lighting a cigarette, "You said it yourself, you ain't got to work today…"

I stopped listening. His hands tried to roam and his lips tried to kiss my skin but I was lost in thought and persisted in pushing his efforts of intimacy away. Memories of the previous night bubbled into the forefront of my mind and I recalled making arrangements with the girls to meet _because_ I had a day off from work. The pieces fit together pretty fast after that. I groaned and put my head in my hands saying,

"Those wretched, evil, villainous women!"

I looked at him and he smiled knowingly.

"And you slimy snail for taking part in their mischief!"

I got out of the bed and stars danced before my eyes as my entire body loosed itself of my control and crumpled heavily to the ground. He was next to me fast, pulling me straight and on my back on the floor, his hand holding up my head as he leaned over me, looking serious and asking if I was alright. I grew suspicious: he had been there while the girls and I spoke of our next job together. We had to pause because of his presence and he charmed the others enough for him to be invited to stay in our company that night. I wasn't happy about it and so I was the fast target of mischief. They drugged me to incompetence and I remembered being situated in his bed by the only girl I still trust out of those criminals while she explained my sourness had to end. Then she disappeared with the American and he must have reappeared after I fell into sleep. I couldn't tell if he had been untoward with me in my unconsciousness, I didn't feel like it though, and as he looked down at me with absolute concern I asked,

"Didn't you see what kind of poison they gave me?"

"Poison?"

"Yes. Or drug. Or medicine. However you prefer it said."

"I thought they were your friends."

"They are. We lost someone recently. Things are tense."

"So they poisoned you?"

I sighed. "It's a power play. An unnecessary one. They're not too bright."

"Can you get back into bed?"

"Not with you hovering over me like so."

He moved, "You can cut the sass, little miss," and walked to the window, relighting his cigarette, "Nothing happened between you and me. I can't say I like being used to mess around with someone's head."

"If it makes you feel any better, the attempt to mess with my head failed."

The door swung immediately open and I looked to a petite little blonde with all the presence of a man in charge, as she looked from him to me, adjusted her face to one of smiling disgust and back at him.

"Who in the Hell is this?" she demanded sharply.

"Susan, this is Veronica."

"Well she can get out."

"As soon as I can walk, aye." I agreed. Fury rose in her cheeks until she looked directly at me and saw no smile or suggestion to intercourse. She crossed the room ignoring me and I searched for my dress and stockings as they argued like a married couple.

"You can't just bring girls in here…"

"She needed my help…"

I found it all neatly folded on a dressed next to the pair of them. I had to cross them to get to it. Carefully standing I tested my balance and bodily control while holding the bar at the bottom of the bed. I was fine, so I moved between them to retrieve my things saying, "don't mind me," and returned to pull it all on. I closed the door behind myself and moved downwards. There were so many people. I looked for one who was approachable and found one at the door.

"Excuse me can you tell me what street I am on, I need to find my bearings?"

A bloody whore house! If i had been seen by _anyone_ …

"Ronnie!" my father greater me, kissing me on the cheek as I passed the threshold, "I've been worried."

"I'm sorry dad, Caitlin needed looking after, she was so ill I worry I've caught what she did!"

"You could have had word sent to me."

"I was a little absent minded." I smiled, not wanting to say 'drunk'. He looked at me sternly, forever like a head master with his hands in his pockets, nearly chewing his own thick grey beard.

"I've travelled all over the world, dad, I know better than to get myself into danger." I assured him. He smiled and patter me on the shoulder before leaving for his work. I washed and dressed myself in clean black clothes to visit my friend's grave.

"Oh Toni," I sighed, setting down the flowers and sitting next to the freshly carved stone, leaning on it with my shoulder.

"They bloody poisoned me last night. It was like an initiation all over again. Who do they think they are?" I sighed and listened to the wildlife that thrived where we buried our dead a moment. "I'm worried, Antonia. I'm worried their carelessness will get us all into trouble. I'm worried our intentions, without you, are lost.

"They behave like my closeness to you would make me their leader and so they have to swat me down fast in case I rise to it. I don't want to be the leader - if we get caught and I'm at the heart of it all I ruin more lives than just mine own."

"I wish I could have done more to help your illness, Toni. I wish you were with us just a little longer."


	3. Chapter 3

I stared from the door. The court hall was full and I should have been at my desk, but not a single member of staff was. We were watching the sentencing of a young man.

"He killed Manby, the Toymaker." a colleague whispered to another. I remembered Manby's Toyshop. I remembered every Christmas, growing up, traveling to Manby's and thinking he was better than Santa Claus and every elf in the North Pole. I remembered the horse and its wheels like a toy car that made the legs move - so lifelike in wood - that had been my favourite of all my toys, and although the man who had made those toys was long since dead, his son-in-laws murder hurt just as much as though the real Manby had been killed. The wife Manby, after the sentencing thanked the men who brought her husband's killer to the steps of the police. But it's wasn't the police who did so. My curiosity took me away from the scene as people made their exit, to my desk where I plotted my course in finding out how average men were taking the mantle of law upon their shoulders.

Between the old newspaper headings in Fred Best's office and the talk in the Brown Bear while I pretended to wait of someone and listened to the talk of coppers, I learned the men with the blue material around their arms and hats were called upon during the Ripper horrors. The police just didn't have the numbers and so they recruited willing volunteers, who just wouldn't give up their power. Commotion outside of the Brown Bear drew me outside before I finished my glass of water. I recognised Reid and Drake at the doors, and pushed through the crowd to hear Fred Best's questions and speculations between a man named Lusk's disparagement of the police force's ability to keep its people safe.

Well that just rubbed me the wrong way, now, didn't it?

A lawyer's body had been pulled from the back of a Maria and taken inside. The spectacle was over and all that kept the people around was the shouting of men at police and back. The shouting ended, people moved away. I moved towards Mr Lusk, the pitiful wretch.

"Its people like you that cause more harm to the pubic than good you pitiful wretch."

He opened his mouth to speak, but I had flipped a little lock on my sleeve disguised as a detailed button that allowed a small dagger to spring forth. Little dagger protruding from my wrist, I placed my hand on his face and pressed, the recognition of a sharp implement against his skin cutting off his need to speak. He held still. No one noticed the blade between his face and my palm, nor did they notice my other hand gripping a finger on his left hand. I snapped it, breaking bone with a flick of my wrist - too enraged for words to suffice. I felt better and walked away. No one seemed to have noticed at all.

Before work the next day, I was still angry about Mr Lusk and his hellions. I wished I had used my jacket with the gun in the sleeve instead of the knife, and I wished I had broken his whole hand, and I wished I had said something better. I passed by Manby's on my way to work taking to a longer route there to do so. The street was thick with people. I pushed my way through, curious as to the matter and I watched, listening to the gossip fly around me. I gathered she had hired Gower to kill her husband - but no, not Gower specifically but a criminally organised gang of young boys - and she did it because Manby was stealing from her till -

And then I heard the worst of the rumours. It made me sink away as she was dragged from the shop spitting threats at Reid, and I spotted Fred Best, from the newspapers. He didn't see me, and I wished I hadn't seen him: the next day, I picked up the news paper and read the news I didn't want to have heard. I just couldn't leave the paper alone, and I couldn't pretend I wasn't interested in the truth of the matter to myself. I did manage to put it down after reading one line.

'A tattoo of the Queen in the cards, means a rape.'


End file.
